


We were victims of the night

by nematoda



Category: X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Charles Xavier has a Ph.D in Adorable, Charles You Slut, Erik Has Feelings, M/M, Meet-Cute, One Shot, Protective Erik, Smitten Erik
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-24
Updated: 2016-02-24
Packaged: 2018-05-23 02:07:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6101260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nematoda/pseuds/nematoda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik drinks to numb the pain, Charles drinks to get funky. (Modern AU, they meet in a club)</p>
            </blockquote>





	We were victims of the night

Erik was sulking.

The lights of the disotech flashed around him, the music pounded in his head like a bad hangover, and the mingling smells of heavy perfume and sweat made his stomach turn. He was tired, bored, and suffering in silence, thanks to his boss, Shaw, who had dragged him out for “congratulatory” drinks after his latest “promotion.” A thirty-three cent raise was hardly a promotion, but Shaw could not be deterred. He always wanted Erik to accompany him on his Friday night excursions, and if that meant bribing him with tiny raises to get him to go out, Shaw would do it.

“Erik,” Shaw had said over the intercom at 5:45 that evening. “I need to speak with you.”

Erik had taken a moment to collect his face into something resembling a smile. It was one of many minute power struggles they engaged in on a daily basis. If Erik wore his classic scowl, Shaw was guaranteed to chide him, “Smile and the world smiles with you!” They usually compromised with a sort of grimace that Erik had convinced him was just his natural smile.

He had headed into Shaw’s office, nursing a sick feeling not unlike déjà vu. This had happened every Friday since Erik had started his job as Shaw’s personal assistant several months ago.

“There you are,” Shaw had said, feigning surprise. He knew perfectly well that Erik was always stationed at the tiny desk right outside his office door, and yet he continued to act as though this information was new to him every time. “I’ve been very impressed with your performance this week”—Erik barely avoided rolling his eyes—“and have decided to give you a thirty-three cent raise. Congratulations!”

“Thank you,” Erik had dutifully replied, feeding into Shaw’s illusion of generosity as he knew was expected. “I appreciate it.”

“You’re very welcome,” Shaw had smiled graciously, not unlike a lord granting his starving peasants food. If there was one thing Shaw loved, it was basking in the glow of his subordinates’ supplication. There had been a pregnant pause while Erik waited for the other shoe to drop and Shaw savored the complete and utter hold he had on his personal assistant. They both knew that Erik had no choice but to lean upon Shaw’s generosity, but Shaw liked to pretend that Erik’s subservience was out of admiration rather than necessity. Who else would hire a twenty-something immigrant with a criminal record and the people skills of an injured porcupine to be their person assistant? If Erik was ever going to get out of his shitty Hell’s Kitchen studio apartment, he knew he had no choice but to take every penny Shaw metaphorically pinged at his face and do so with a smile.

Erik had taken a half-step toward the doorway. “If that’s all, I still need to type up the meeting notes from this afternoon…”

“Of course! Back to work!”

Erik had turned and passed through the doorway, pulling the door handle behind him as he went. His heart pounded with false hope. Usually Shaw was more straightforward… perhaps this meant he was free? A Friday night off was a luxury he hadn’t been granted in weeks; he would skip the thirty-three cents if it meant he could go to bed at a decent hour.

“Erik, just a minute.”

There it was.

“We should celebrate your promotion, no?”

_No._

“Certainly, sir.”

“Perfect. Call Emma and tell her we’re going out tonight. I want to try that new club I heard the interns talking about.”

So here he was, at “Mystique,” the hottest discotec in Manhattan, sitting as far as humanly possible away from Shaw and Emma, who were necking violently in the back of a curved booth. Usually on these nights, Erik tried to stay relatively sober, in case Shaw needed help getting home, but tonight he slammed back whiskey after whiskey with the determination of a seasoned alcoholic. His pleasantly fuzzy head didn’t do anything to mask the slurping and sucking sounds coming from the couple, however, and after a particularly obscene moan from Emma, Erik gritted his teeth and stood.

“I need some fresh air,” Erik muttered, purposely not raising his voice over the music. It wasn’t as if Shaw would give a shit anyway. He was eight drinks in and had his on-again-off-again piece of ass in front of him. A tornado could rip through the club and he wouldn’t budge. Erik teetered on long legs, an unexpected head rush causing him to stumble a few steps forward and grab onto the balcony railing. Below him, hundreds of bodies writhed like snakes to the music. He viscerally hated the club scene. The noise, the smells, the way everyone collectively agreed to forget the rules of being functional human beings in favor of a night of revelry. He shoved off of the railing, heading toward the stairs they had ascended to get to the VIP lounge that was Shaw’s natural right in every club they visited. He had to admit, the balcony was a nice touch. No jostling at the bar, no bumping into intoxicated idiots at the urinals. If he had no choice but to go clubbing with Shaw again next Friday, he would nudge him to return here.

Having made it down the stairs, Erik edged his way around the dance floor, making as little contact with his fellow club patrons as possible. Alcohol made everyone behave like animals, flailing their limbs about and jumping up and down to the beat. Sure, there were always one or two people whose inherent musicality made every movement seem like a choreographed performance, but for the most part, the dance floor was a perpetually uncoordinated mass of body parts. He could see the front entrance, only twenty yards away, his path to salvation. He gave up on his strict no touching rule in favor of shoving past people.

His new vantage point gave him a glimpse of a young, lithe man dancing with the passion and lack of coordination of the masses. Most people on the dance floor were dead in the face, given over to the trance of alcohol and strobe lights, moving with little emotion. But this man smiled and laughed, flipping sweaty hair out of his eyes. He twirled his partner, a tall, stunning blonde woman, under his arm, accidentally elbowing her in the nose in the process. The pair burst out into giggles, engaged in a half-hearted shoving match, and settled on the woman twirling the man instead. They looked ridiculous, but also ridiculously happy, and Erik felt a pang of jealously in his chest. He had been single and friendless for most of his life, and so far, it had been more of a relief than a nuisance, but his whiskey-addled brain was playing tricks on him. He found himself staring intently at the man, imagining what it would feel like to wrap his arms around him and lean in close—

Erik’s daze was shattered suddenly when he realized that the blonde was staring directly at him over the shoulder of her dance partner. She smirked at him, and, maintaining eye contact, leaned in to shout something in the smaller man’s ear. Just as the man began to turn, Erik snapped out of his reverie and turned purposefully toward the door. He hadn’t realized just how far into the dance floor he had stumbled, however, because his sudden turn against the flow of the crowd caused him to collide full-force with a barrel-chested frat boy type, knocking Erik flat on his ass and punching the breath out of his lungs.

“What’s your problem, man?” The frat boy hollered, shoving the throng aside as Erik sat on the sticky floor, gasping for air. His fall was unfortunately timed with a seconds-long break in the music, and the dancers around him shuffled awkwardly, unsure whether to help the scary-looking guy or back away. The music started up again, this time with less bass and more feeling, and the dancers cheered, quickly forgetting about Erik still on the floor.

_“Oh don’t you dare look back, just keep your eyes on me…”_

Finally catching his breath, Erik put his hands on the floor (grimacing at the stickiness) to get some leverage to stand, only to have his left hand stomped on by a girl in strappy heels. He hissed his pain through his teeth and pulled his hand to his chest, wishing he were anywhere but on the floor of a discotec with a sore hand and tailbone and a cottony head that was making his reaction time impossibly slow. Erik looked up to locate the hand-stomping culprit, only to find himself face-to-face with the man at whom he had been staring moments ago.

_“The chemical, physical kryptonite…”_

The man held out his hand, a worried frown creasing his freckled forehead. His eyes were so blue that Erik’s impaired brain thought they must be fake somehow. He spent a few moments trying to remember how it was exactly that people fake their eye color— _contact lenses, right—_ before belatedly registered that the man was asking if he was okay, and nodded slowly. He gripped the man’s arm, and found himself being hauled to his feet with a surprising amount of strength for so small a man.

_“…born to get together…”_

Now that Erik was upright, he realized that the height difference between the two was laughable. Despite that, the man’s hand on his shoulder and glinting, confident eyes were enough to make Erik feel impossibly small. The stranger palmed Erik’s already-bruising hand, feeling gently for any broken bones. _“You’ll live,”_ he mouthed at Erik, eliciting a sheepish flush that Erik could feel all the way to his scalp. Still holding his hand, the man turned and dragged him through the horde, Erik stumbling behind him like drunk, wounded puppy he had become. They ended up a few feet further into the dance floor, just steps away from the blonde woman, who was dancing (now with much more grace minus her short, uncoordinated partner) up against a tall, nerdy-looking kid who seemed to be experiencing nirvana. So the small man and the blonde woman weren’t a couple then. Erik felt something that felt strangely like relief. He blamed it on the alcohol. His mental processes hadn’t sharpened enough to figure out why they had stopped moving, and he stood still, looking down at the other man, who had begun dancing again. The man tilted his head and smiled encouragingly, and the pieces finally fell into place in Erik’s addled brain. The man wanted to dance with Erik. His face flushed even more as he shook his head and waved his hands in front of his body, mouthing _“I don’t dance.”_ The man rolled his eyes, put his palm on Erik’s chest directly over his heart, and shouted in perfect time with the music,

_“SHUT UP AND DANCE WITH ME!”_

Erik started moving, unsure of himself but inexplicably desperate to please this mysterious stranger. The man guided him physically through the song, pushing here and pulling there in time with the music, and it was all Erik could do to keep moving instead of standing still and focusing on the man’s gentle touches to his arms and chest. Erik was mesmerized by the man, never looking away throughout the whole dance. Those impossibly blue eyes, the smattering of freckles across his nose, the delicate but vibrant red lips that the man kept biting as he danced… Erik was completely hypnotized, so much so that he hardly noticed the man had been inching closer as the song drove to a climax.

_“Deep in her eyes I think I see the future_

_I realize this is my last chance”_

The man pulled their bodies closer together, until they were not so much dancing as moving against one another. Erik pushed back, creating as many points of contact between their bodies as possible. With Erik’s head tilted down and the other man’s face craned up, they were practically nose-to-nose, and Erik could smell the alcohol on the man’s breath. Erik reached his hand up to stroke a finger underneath a soft, stubbled jaw, and, after a brief flutter of eyelids during which his eyes seemed to roll back in his head in pleasure, the man looked up at Erik intensely through thick, dark eyelashes. The song was winding down, but they hardly noticed. Erik’s head spun with the lyrics of the song, and as he leaned down to kiss the man, the only thought he could focus on was, _“This man is my destiny.”_

What started as a gentle press of lips quickly turned heated, and Erik set upon a mission to touch every inch of the man’s skin that he could get his hands on. He wound a hand up the back of the man’s shirt, pressing his still sticky and throbbing palm against the small of the man’s back. His other hand snaked up the man’s neck into locks of sweat-dampened brown hair, dragging blunt nails against the man’s scalp and eliciting a gasp that he greedily inhaled. As the song finished, the pair were startled apart by the cheers and catcalls of the throng around them. Blood pounded thickly in his head as Erik glanced around the crowd with daggers in his eyes, still clutching the other man to his chest. Something about the vulnerability of the whole situation was deeply unsettling, and the jeering of the crowd was making his knuckles itch for a fight. He was about to pull away and choose one of the jeerers to punch when he felt a warm hand grip his jaw and turn his head back. He looked down to see the man, face flushed, eyes glinting, lips wet and swollen, and all of the fight drained out of him.

“I’m Charles, by the way,” the man supplied with a cheeky grin.

“Erik.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Erik. What do you say we get out of here?”

“I would like that.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry for this. I just had to get it out of my system. I actually wrote it last summer, and just now found it on my hard drive. Whoops.


End file.
